Reading the Strozier essays and Glorious Appearing one after the other was a strange experience to say the least. On the one hand, reading Glorious Appearing felt like watching a particularly bad action movie. We know who the good guys are, we know who the bad guys are, and we know what the final outcome will be – we are just waiting for things to blow up and people to die. On the other hand, considering the influential role that fundamentalist Christians play in American politics, Strozier’s analysis of the fundamentalist mindset is frightening, particularly the natural progression from rigid dualistic thinking to the legitimization of violence against others. Furthermore, when I consider how many weeks that the Left Behind series spent on the New York Times Best Sellers list, it is even more disturbing to realize that there are people out there consuming the books’ moral message uncritically.

Early on in the novel, one of the characters states that his “faith will not be shaken” if the Messiah does not come at the expected time. The book is set at the end of the seven years of tribulation, a few hours before Jesus Christ is expected to return. Chaim’s unshakeable belief in the inevitability of the coming of Christ is one of the aspects of fundamentalism that Strozier discusses. A true believer, according to Strozier, is “not baffled, frightened, or discouraged by obstacles; his faith makes him secure” (14). Faith in a dualistic vision of the world, where everything is unequivocally good or bad, means that nothing can change a believer’s mind about the righteous of his belief. Many of the main cast of Glorious Appearing are “born again” Christians, who have devoted their new lives entirely to the Lord’s cause. The message at the heart of the novel seems to be ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us;’ fundamentalist dogma leaves very little room for moral ambiguity or indecision.

It is one thing for a novel, with its cookie-cutter villains, to express such a morally simplistic worldview; it is quite different to find this sort of moral absolutism to be prevalent in real life. LaHaye and Jenkins’ characters accept that millions of people across the world are going to die; in fact, this is seen as a just and necessary thing, because the cleansing of the world is the first step towards redemption. As Strozier states, dualistic thinking forces people to compartmentalize the world according to strict categories of good and evil; it leaves fundamentalists “unable to imagine the inner world and humanity of others” (14). If others don’t share the same beliefs or values, they are enemies and must be eliminated. Considering the variety of issues and groups of people that fundamentalists view as threats to their way of life, there is good reason to be concerned.

On a side note, it is interesting that Christian fundamentalism is considered a uniquely American phenomenon. I wonder if its possible to draw a connection between the morally righteous rhetoric found in religious fundamentalism, with the rhetoric used by the government and media to often justify US military or diplomatic intervention across the world. The US is very clearly formulated as the ‘good guys,’ with a variety of ‘bad guys’, from communism to terrorists, acting as our arch nemeses.